Call It ‘Tech-lanta.’ The City’s Thriving Industry Is Boosting Real Estate, Too.

 

Check out this feature on Atlanta’s innovative technology and real estate industries, from Mansion Global. Click here to read the full article.

 

Atlanta has long been a finance capital of the world, with some 70% of all global financial transactions passing through companies headquartered in metro Atlanta as of 2016, according to Forbes. Fintech companies have followed suit with Fiserv, BitPay, Bluefin, Kabbage and GreenSky among those that have set up shop in Atlanta alongside banking giants like MasterCard, which opened its first office there last year.

 

The Atlanta metro area also has thriving medical, logistics and security tech scenes, drawing talent from top universities like Georgia Tech, which real estate investment firm JLL noted is the No. 1 school from which AI employees graduated, and Emory. Take AthenaHealth, the provider of IT services for healthcare, and Area-I, Inc, an aerospace company that specializes in the development of unmanned aircraft systems, which both have a presence in the area.

 

Of course, Atlanta’s home to the classics, too. That is, 16 Fortune 500 companies including NCR and Global Payments, alongside tech titans Panasonic, Intel and Google, which opened a new, 500,000-square-foot office in the city in July 2022.

 

In short, there’s no shortage of tech jobs in the city. According to JLL, there are 112,000 tech jobs at 8,500 tech companies in Atlanta in 2024 with an expected growth of nearly 12% in both jobs and tech companies over the next five years.

 

But for many of the transplants, the job market plays second fiddle to the city itself.

 

“For many years, companies would say ‘I’m going to set up here,’ and people would follow them. Now people are choosing where they want to live and looking around and saying, ‘OK, now I need to get a job,’” said Eloisa Klementich, president and CEO of Invest Atlanta, the economic development authority for the City of Atlanta. “The businesses are following the talent, and the talent are choosing Atlanta.”

 

 

Atlanta’s Secret Sauce

Klementich said Atlanta’s “secret sauce” is its concentration of human capital, from the many tech-adjacent graduates of Atlanta’s spate of colleges and universities, from Georgia Tech to Kennesaw University, to its creative-field graduates, including those from the Savannah College of Art and Design’s Atlanta campus to graduates of its historically black college and universities, including Spelman and Morehouse.

She said the variety not only of intellectual specialties but also of experiences and backgrounds is what make Atlanta such an intriguing place for companies.

 

“We have, I would argue, the highest concentration of corporate innovation centers in the country” where these tech-trained employees coalesce with the creatively trained to create stronger, more diverse teams, she said.

 

Take Nike, which announced a technology center in West Midtown, near Georgia Tech, in 2022, where the company said it would focus on logistics and supply chain, cybersecurity, and AI and machine learning.

 

Or Ford, which opened a 24,000-square-foot research and innovation center in Atlanta’s West Side neighborhood in October 2022 where it innovates on software-led connected vehicles and AI.

 

Or MasterCard’s collaborative workspace in Ponce City Market, a major hub of tech companies in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward neighborhood that debuted in 2014.

 

Also at Ponce City Market is MailChimp, which takes 126,000 square feet for 500 employees, according to Atlanta Magazine, and OnPay, a payroll, HR and benefits software company. The payroll technology firm Sage Software plans to move into 57,000 square feet on site in the fall.

 

 

On the Horizon

It’s up and up for Atlanta.

 

“The reality is every company is now a technology company,” Klementich said, adding that a company “always has to be innovating, and that is happening here in Atlanta.” She said it’s driving more companies to put more research dollars into their work here, because “everyone wants to be in front of the curve.”

 

Doyle observed that developers are acting the same way. “Each of these new buildings in Midtown is a $250 million building. The level of investment we’re seeing in this area is over the top,” he said. “All of these companies are choosing to invest here, and have all these data points” that bear out that Atlanta is going to be a profitable choice.

 

The Atlanta Regional Commission reported that Atlanta has added over 33,000 residents since 2020 for a population of 532,115. When the surrounding regions are factored into that count, the area’s brought in about 254,000 new residents since 2020 for a total of 5.2 million.

 

Doyle said that Atlanta’s mild climate, a still-affordable quality of life and perks like nightlife and the BeltLine, the 22-mile multi-use trail that’s under development and will connect a large part of the city center, are all huge reasons people are choosing to be here.

 

He added, “It’s a great place to invest, because we already have a strong basis for growth.”